Pop quiz: You own or manage a restaurant. A hotel. A coffee shop. A specialty goods store. A hot dog stand. A bank. A movie theater. A shoe store. A gym. A bodega. A hair salon. A sushi bar. A pub. A public park. A swimming pool. A museum. An art gallery. A city. Do you know who the mayor of your business is?
If you don’t, find out today. Right now. Here’s why: It could help your business grow pretty quickly if you play your cards right. More on that in a minute. First, here’s how to find out who has claimed the title of mayor on Foursquare: (Huh? fourwhat? Hang on. We’ll get to that too.)
The How:
Step 1: Go to www.foursquare.com
Step 2: In the search box (top right) enter your business name.
Step 3: When your business information pops up, look to the right of the screen. You will see an icon labeled “mayor”. That’s who the mayor is.
The Now What:
Find out who they are, and you give them the royal treatment next time they come into your store. Let them know you’re paying attention to a) Foursquare, b) whom is taking the time to check in every time they come into your place of business, and c) who is sharing that information (that recommendation) with their friends on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.
Think about giving them a discount or a gift while you’re at it. Set up a “mayor parking” spot outside. Treat them like a VIP inside the store. Address them as “Mister Mayor” or “Your Grace,” when they walk in. It’s up to you. Have fun with it. Give them more reasons to like you. It never hurts to reward kindness with kindness, and remember that it is supposed to be fun and rewarding.
The Why:
If you aren’t familiar with Foursquare yet, here it is in a paragraph: It’s a game played on mobile devices. People “check in” to businesses and other locations, and try to accumulate points. In some instances, they win much coveted “badges” (see some examples below).
In other instances, if they are the most frequent visitor of a location (like your store), they are crowned “mayor” of that location. The game is free, works on a variety of mobile platforms, and players have the option to share their check-ins with their network of family and friends on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook. It’s a silly game, sure, but it is powerful as well. Here’s why:
1. Frequency – Because checking-in is a game, it is fun. That, in and of itself, is reward enough. Mayorships and badges are also rewards for activity on Foursquare. What it means is this: Foursquare gives people an incentive to visit your store more often, just so they can check in. Especially if you are running a promotion aimed at your store’s mayor. As a business, you can thus easily use Foursquare to increase the frequency of visits to your store(s). That equates to more foot traffic, more mindshare, and potentially more sales. (While they’re in your store, they’ll probably buy something.)
2. Reach – In case you missed it earlier, when someone “checks in” to your location, they broadcast that check-in to their various digital networks. Right now, that is mostly Foursquare itself, Twitter and Facebook. This will probably grow over time. But consider that the average american has what… over 200+ “friends” on Facebook? Think about the power of having a single customer broadcast that they are in your restaurant, in your hair salon, in your pub to 200+ of their friends every time they come in. Now multiply that by ten customers. Now multiply that by 100 customers.
Though not technically “active” word of mouth, Foursquare check-ins are still de-facto endorsement of your business. In other words, it isn’t just a question of exposure. A check-in is an affirmation of endorsement. It might as well say “I am here, and I am proud to tell you all that I am doing business here. Come do the same.” That’s the context of a check-in.
Every time one of your customers checks-in and broadcasts that they are doing business with you, they potentially trigger a visit in an average of 200 other potential customers. (Either existing customers or potential customers.)
3. Yield – Of the three, this one is probably the toughest to achieve, but as a measure of loyalty, yield (average purchase amount) can be impacted by foursquare activity. As frequency of visits increases and loyalty follows suit, it is likely that a portion of your customers will escalate their purchase amounts as well. Loyalty can lead to a higher percentage of wallet share, not just through buy rates (frequency) but also higher price-point purchases.
A word on escalation: Take the example of a bike shop. A casual customer may come in once a month and buy some energy bars, a bike jersey and some socks. As this customer is developed into a regular, they start purchasing all of their energy bars from you instead of buying them from several different places. They may also start jonesing for that new pair of cycling shoes and that new helmet they will soon rationalize they need to replace their “old” ones with. If you treat them well and understand their needs, this escalation may lead to a higher dollar purchase like a race wheel upgrade, a carbon-fiber set of handlebars upgrade, a full bike tune-up, or even a brand new bike to start off the new season in style.
Result: In six months to a year, you could potentially turn a casual customer who only bought low-hanging-fruit items in your store to a loyal customer with a habit of dropping large amounts of cash on premium upgrades with you, instead of blowing them on something else.
Note: You cannot escalate yield if you do not have a relationship with your customer. There is no shortcut here. You have to get to know them. You have to become part of their world. This is not something you can do from a corporate office, or from the back of the store. Someone has to interact with them on a human level – both online and offline.
More thoughts on how to leverage Foursquare:
How your business can use Foursquare is up to you. Use your imagination. Try different things. Be clever. Have fun with it. Perhaps you can work with Foursquare to create badges for your business, the way that Bravo, Starbucks, SxSW, Marc Jacobs and several cities (San Francisco, New York, Brooklyn and Chicago) already have. Here is Starbucks’ very own Barista badge. To obtain it, players only need check in at 5 different Starbucks locations:
Imagine the same thing for your business, or banding with retailers in your area to create a badge players could unlock by visiting 5 of your combined locations. You could work with an organization or with a city even, to help promote your business through Foursquare. You don’t have to do it all yourself.
Perhaps you can also create promotions around Foursquare activity, like flashmobs (using your business and a particular sales event to help customers achieve both all-too elusive swarm badges (50 people checking in together and 250 people checking in together.)
Another fun idea: Procure some Foursquare Merit Badges and ceremoniously award them to customers who acquired virtual badges online (see below).
Whatever you choose to do, start at the beginning: Find out who the mayor of your business is, acknowledge that status, and reward it with warmth and gratitude, if not with product. Next: Create an account and get rolling. It’s your business. Take charge and participate. Welcome to a whole new world of marketing fun. If you’re lucky, you will beat your competitors to it. (Never underestimate first-mover advantage, especially in the age of twitter & facebook real-time word-of-mouth.)
Footnote: I spoke to two retailers yesterday who had never heard of foursquare. One didn’t know that dozens of customers were already checking into their store regularly, and I added the other’s venue because there wasn’t one yet. Guess what: One knows who the mayor of their business is today, and he has a plan now. The other will know as soon as someone becomes the mayor, and is already working on some promotions. We will revisit these two businesses in a few months to see how they fare.
Also check out Gowalla.com while you’re at it. Very much the same thing, and it too is growing.
Additional reading:
Via Mark Van Baale (@markvanbaale on twitter) – “Foursquare sees another big Domino fall“
And this great piece via Mashable on Foursquare’s business analytics dashboard.
I was a FourSquare skeptic until I used it for awhile and saw how well it complements other lifestreams (e.g., Twitter). It’s fun, useful and pushes the buttons in our nature that love playing games (and winning the Barista badge).
Your analysis of frequency and reach is spot on, and I think you’re right that yield is a bit of a stretch. FourSquare also provides benefits related to less quantitative SM objectives, like brand loyalty and reputation monitoring/management.
Hopefully, FourSquare (and other LBS) will start providing business accounts that provide things like analytics to go beyond just identifying the mayor. After all, isn’t it important to reward or recognize other loyal customers, even if they’re not number one?
Doh! Looks like I missed the news that FourSquare has business analytics. 🙂
http://mashable.com/2010/03/09/foursquare-business-dashboard/
Thanks, Ryan. I just added that link to the post.
Genius. Everyone comes w/a belly button and “What’s in it for me?” stamped on their brain: standard issue. Find a way to make people feel special and they will sing your praises.
Incorporating strategic foursquare marketing is like setting the snowball at the top of the mountain in motion. You (as a business) start the momentum in the right direction, be able to back up your actions and let the social media avalanche do the heavy lifting.
Pick one or two small strategies; do them well and watch what happens.
Thanks for the forum.
Best,
M.
Great way to put it. I love the snowball imagery.
Hi Olivier,
While it is true that Foursquare can connect local businesses to tech oriented and younger customers, it misses the boat with women, most importantly “moms” – the demographic that controls 85% of local purchases.
Now I do know Moms who use foursquare, but they are the exception to the rule. There are two reasons why moms are likely to be very reluctant to adopting foursquare.
1- Moms are leery of broadcasting there location
2- Moms could care less about the gaming aspect
If a location based service wants to attract moms it need to offer real value everyday.
Dave McClure believes that $5 is the opening bid. Check out his article “Check-Ins are Coupons. Game Mechanics are Bullshit. Show Me The MONEY or Go Home” http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/04/checkins-are-coupons.html
Just thought I would add a little fuel to the fire.
Andrew Mueller
@andrewmueller
Great point. Assuming that trend doesn’t change (and I think it will – as kids start using it to earn badges, moms will too) it’s still okay: It complements other marketing efforts. It doesn’t replace anything. So… targeting demos that don’t use foursquare yet will not be affected by adding a foursquare strategy to the mix. The potential here is huge, especially as these types of platforms get a little more… advanced. We need more badges. More rewards. More back-end functionality for businesses. You want to be able to plug this into CRM/SCRM.
Good observation about the mom demo today. 🙂
As a mom who uses foursquare, I believe that education about how to use it goes a long way.
I can check into a location without divulging my whereabouts and still collect points.
Savvy businesses will educate their clientle as to this fact. From a collateral/print aspect, I see table tops, sack stuffers etc serving as Mobile App Tutorials.
“Thanks for stopping in for a coffee today! Are you using Foursquare? Gowalla? Yelp? Did you know that if you are the mayor of ABC Coffee, you could earn a $5 bonus card?
Step one: Check in etc…”
Easy peasy. Tell me how to benefit from choosing you as a business and make it easy. I am willing to meet you halfway as a consumer.
Bingo.
I agree that it make perfect sense to add Foursquare to your marketing mix if you are targeting the techie and young adult demographics. I just don’t think it is the answer to connecting average people to local businesses.
I don’t think “average folks” get much benefit from it or will use it because of the game mechanics. Average folks do not care about collecting meaningless virtual badges. If average folks are going to use foursquare, some serious immediate financial benefit must be offered.
As far as I can see Foursquare is a killer app in a targeted demographic, but I don’t think it is the next big think everyone is hyping nor do I think it can easily crossover to other demographics. I have never heard anyone who is not either a techie or scenester rave about it! Have you?
O you know me pretty well and I hope you don’t mind if I am straight forward with you and the great folks that read your blog – You took to it because you are the target demographic and I think this skews your opinion of it. It think that most of the folks that have written and raved about foursquare are also part of the target demographic and it has skewed their opinion as well.
Andrew
1. Uh, I’m “old.” My oldest daughter turns 21 in 2 months and my baby is 15 years old. I use my smartphone more than my girls, with 4 emails synched into it. However, I test out at 96 on the Pew Study for millennials (http://pewresearch.org/millennials/), because I’ve always been an conforming anarchist at heart, and I always want to know the next best thing.
2. If you assign value to a badge by now making it worth $5 or 20% off your tab, it is no longer meaningless.
3. If what you offer is a worthy enough “carrot,” I’ll learn the technology to attain it.
4. With the adoption of foursquare by Bravo and Starbucks, mobile apps like foursquare are now edging into mainstream territory. Businesses who can capitalize and form consumer behavior at this stage have a huge opportunity to gain the most, both in terms of market share and actual revenues.
5. I think you were actually referring to Oliver at that last, but I think that you are both correct and incorrect regarding techies only raving about it. Techies *may* only be the ones raving about it at this point, but that’s because the Middle takes a bit of time to notice what the bleeding edge crazies are raving about.
If techies didn’t have any influence in the wave of adoption, we’d still have three channels on the telly.
Thanks so much for the conversation. I truly appreciate the opportunity to exchange thoughts.
Best,
M.
Olivier,
Nice follow up from your interview on the hospitality show.
Foursquare is an indispensible element of a brick and mortar store business practice.
Now, you are on the hunt to get as many badges as you can, proof that Foursquare is addictive and if a business owner understands it, they can complement their approach to customer SERVICE.
But, you said it very well…
KC.
I know. How ironic is it that three months ago, I was scoffing at foursquare and making fun of mayorship updates popping up on twitter. Now look at me: Not even a full month in, and I’m already addicted. 😀
Hi Olivier – I am a fan of your blog and a reader since October (3 conferences and a funeral) – but I am not convinced that foursquare, Gowalla or any of these other tools will be the answer for small businesses.
Here’s why:
I recently moved back to the US from Switzerland and started frequenting a local Chipotle. I love their food and missed it – so I over did it a bit with the burritos in the first few weeks that I was here. I soon became the mayor on foursquare. While on the inside, I thought damn-right-I-am-the-mayor-give-me-some-free-guacamole. I soon recognized that Chipotle had many “real” mayors. These people probably came in for lunch everyday. They knew the entire staff and they chatted about this, that and the other thing.
Based on this simple example — if I am a small business, not only am I thinking about foursquare, I am thinking about an integrated strategy to recognize all the “mayors” of my business.
On the other hand, if I am a large retailer like Target or Best Buy – then I may want to give this a closer look. Why? I could setup a badge system that is tied to my internal CRM system or loyalty program. If you come in 30 times in a year and buy $75 worth of groceries on average at Super Target then I might want to give you the “Grocery Getter” badge. Or if you buy an entire home theatre at one or more Best Buy stores during a 24 month time period, then I might want to give you the “Best Buy Pimped Out My Basement” badge or something of that nature.
I don’t know. For some reason, I can see large retailers taking advantage of these social applications and scaling them much easier than a small bicycle shop.
– Sam
You’re right: It isn’t the answer. It’s just a tool. One of MANY.
I pretty much agree with everything you say. I don’t think though, that the size of the business matters when it comes to this (aside from CRM integration – cost reasons). Every brick and mortar business is a small business, really. Whether you have 5,000 stores or just one, each store is its own little kingdom with its own regulars. 😉
Good points about Foursquare being a virtual loyalty-card program and a vehicle through which businesses can engage with customers and deepen further their relationships with them.
Something to point out to business owners is Foursquare’s dashboard (I think it’s been rolled out to everyone), which provides useful real-time statistics, such as visitor volume segmented by time intervals, breakdown of the male:female customer ratio, and percentages of updates posted to Twitter and Facebook, among other data.
Also, as a Foursquare-er, something I’ve found to be beneficial are the “tips” business owners or employees (and/or other users) leave . . . otherwise, how would I know “The $5-burger-with-hand-cut-fries special is one of downtown’s best happy-hour deals”? 🙂
Good point about the dashboard. It is excellent. I should have mentioned it.
I regularly visit small businesses that have no idea what foursquare is, let alone that they are on it and have a mayor. Some still don’t care, but happily, most are at least interested in learning more (even though they think it’s funny and geeky and roll their eyes a little) – they recognize the mayor is a valued customer with potential reach.
Even my local starbucks, of which I am mayor, didn’t know about 4sq until the day I took over mayorship and asked them about this other guy (the one I took mayorship from). They thought it was the funniest thing, I mean seriously, what geeks do that??
Then when starbucks pushed out mayor rewards at the corporate level I got to go through it again. The store was completely uninformed, didn’t know it was happening or what promo code to use. Lucky for them, they have a kind and benevolent mayor who could explain it. 😀
They get it, sorta, they just don’t get it…
PS. Welcome to foursquare, Olivier! Surely the only thing I beat you to! I think you just pooh-poohed it longer than I did, I gave in first. 🙂
Interesting that the people at Starbucks didn’t know about this.
I’m surprisingly not an early adopter. I let other people beta-test for me, then when it seems to be working/scaling, that’s when I jump in. 😉
Foursquare, in my experience, has a pretty unfit customer service. This is true accross the board with most start-ups living as Social business clients/satelites/tools.
This might be a stall as more businesses adopt the tool and that agencies/consultants are not able to receive proper and timely service.
It goes back to what we have been discussing for a few months. Having a great produt is one thing but there is an indispensible need to makes sure customer experience extends to the service.
Sorry, second comment of the day! Spamming you now 🙂
I agree 100%. I haven’t run into a SM platform yet that had decent customer support. Foursquare isn’t creating badges fast enough.
Best article on 4SQ I’ve read in a while and some great comments to!
Just wanted to pick up on something Sam said about venues rewarding “real” Mayors…
I’m mayor of Sue’s Cafe in Newport Market (http://foursquare.com/venue/518913) – however before that I was also a “real” mayor – I already got a discount for my loyalty. Sue has owned the cafe for nearly 35 years and I don’t think she’s interested in tapping into 4sQ. However, this does not mean that she and her business will not get a benefit from it – as a loyal customer I’m happy to add her venue, add tips and make a social media “noise” on her behalf (and without her knowledge). I’m not saying what I have done has massively increased her “yield” but there is “some” benefit…especially since Newport will have a lot more young, technically active students in the next few months. Sue’s Cafe (and many more) have essentially been “primed” for the 4SQ game
@joel_hughes
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I’m an avid Foursquare user and a Mom. As a PR professional, I have written about Foursquare numerous times.
Addressing some points made:
-Gaming. Women enjoy gaming just as much as men and my Foursquare friends it is 50/50. And many are parents.
-Broadcast of location. Everyone should use common-sense and not share school or home information.
– Moms (or anyone since everyone is very busy) are very mobile spending lots of time on their smart phones managing their lives. Foursquare can assist people when they are out by providing information and deals at the place they shop as soon they check in. (Without all the silly tags on the keychain)
– Foursquare can be used to attract and keep customers. And small businesses I’ve found are taking the lead. They have the passion for what they are doing, service is personal, and are nimble enough to adapt to new ideas quickly. Starbucks is the only large company, I’ve experienced, that has embraced Foursquare with rewarding Mayors and users with treats.
Businesses need to think outside of the box. This is a new platform where the roadmap isn’t set.
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People thought Twitter was a dumb idea until they realized it would be a great way to promote their products/brand. The same thing is occurring with FourSquare. I was wondering, however, how start-up tech companies could use FourSquare to market themselves as well. Perhaps FourSquare will start branching out beyond tangible stores to include other “places,” like websites?
I’d like to see that, yes. It’s a natural progression of their service. Location should also be virtual, for obvious reasons. Should be easy to work out. Same principle as signing in with a Facebook, Twitter or Disqus profile.
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Thanks
Let me start by saying nice post. Im not sure if it has been talked about, but when using Chrome I can never get the entire site to load without refreshing many times. Could just be my computer.
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